Mobility, Transnationalism and Contemporary African Societies

Mobility, Transnationalism and Contemporary African Societies
Author: Tilo Grätz
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2010-01-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1443818852

The book is meant to shed new light on migratory processes pertinent to Sub-Saharan Africa. It starts out from the position that contemporary migratory movements can only be assessed by employing an appropriate theoretical framework which helps with conceptualising both localised strategies of migrants, i.e. their modes of adaptation, economic and social integration into host societies and the way they maintain relationships back home, across places and nations, i.e. translocal aspects of their mobility in terms of networking, communication or economic as well as cultural transfers. It this respect, the book contributes to the current debate on processes and effects of worldwide mobility, addressing causes and effects and the various aspects of a “culture of migration” relevant for the African continent. Additionally, the book tries to go beyond the usual structural discussions and reflections on mobility and migration by looking at actual migrant practices, their social creativity, the employment of flexible responses to often restrictive governmental policies. Finally, the volume also discusses the often neglected issue of (involuntary) immobility, as well as the significance of borders, in both limiting mobility and in creating new “borderline” strategies, to employ a notion by Ines Kohl with regard to migrants’ transnational strategies. The book addresses a wide readership in Human Sciences; especially from African Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, and Political Sciences.

African Transnational Mobility in China

African Transnational Mobility in China
Author: Roberto Castillo
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2020-12-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000338134

Considering the African presence in China from an ethnographic and cultural studies perspective, this book offers a new way to theorise contemporary and future forms of transnational mobilities while expanding our understandings around the transformations happening in both China and Africa. The author develops an original argument and new theoretical insights about the significance of the African presence in Guangzhou, and presents an invaluable case study for understanding particular modes of transnational mobility. More broadly, it challenges forms of (re)presenting and producing knowledge about subjects on the move; and it transforms existing theorisations and critical understandings of mobility and its shaping power. Through an ethnographic approach, the book brings us closer to a number of practices, features and objects that, while characterising the lives of Africans in Guangzhou, are also evidence of the interplay between individual aspirations, and the structural constraints embedded in contemporary regimes of transnational mobility. Raising critical questions about ways of (un)belonging in the precarious settings of neoliberal modernity and the future of African mobilities, this book will be of interest to scholars of transnational, African and Chinese Studies.

Medicine, Mobility, and Power in Global Africa

Medicine, Mobility, and Power in Global Africa
Author: Hansjörg Dilger
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2012-10-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0253357098

Recent political, social, and economic changes in Africa have provoked radical shifts in the landscape of health and healthcare. Medicine, Mobility, and Power in Global Africa captures the multiple dynamics of a globalized world and its impact on medicine, health, and the delivery of healthcare in Africa—and beyond. Essays by an international group of contributors take on intractable problems such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and insufficient access to healthcare, drugs, resources, hospitals, and technologies. The movements of people and resources described here expose the growing challenges of poverty and public health, but they also show how new opportunities have been created for transforming healthcare and promoting care and healing.

Gender and Mobility in Africa

Gender and Mobility in Africa
Author: Kalpana Hiralal
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2018-07-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3319657836

This volume examines gender and mobility in Africa though the central themes of borders, bodies and identity. It explores perceptions and engagements around ‘borders’; the ways in which ‘bodies’ and women’s bodies in particular, shape and are affected by mobility, and the making and reproduction of actual and perceived ‘boundaries’; in relation to gender norms and gendered identify. Over fourteen original chapters it makes revealing contributions to the field of migration and gender studies. Combining historical and contemporary perspectives on mobility in Africa, this project contextualises migration within a broad historical framework, creating a conceptual and narrative framework that resists post-colonial boundaries of thought on the subject matter. This multidisciplinary work uses divergent methodologies including ethnography, archival data collection, life histories and narratives and multi-country survey level data and engages with a range of conceptual frameworks to examine the complex forms and outcomes of mobility on the continent today. Contributions include a range of case studies from across the continent, which relate either conceptually or methodologically to the central question of gender identity and relations within migratory frameworks in Africa. This book will appeal to researchers and scholars of politics, history, anthropology, sociology and international relations.

Social Im/mobilities in Africa

Social Im/mobilities in Africa
Author: Joël Noret
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2019-11-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789204860

Grounded in both theory and ethnography, this volume insists on taking social positionality seriously when accounting for Africa’s current age of polarizing wealth. To this end, the book advocates a multidimensional view of African societies, in which social positions consist of a variety of intersecting social powers - or ‘capitals’ – including wealth, education, social relationships, religion, ethnicity, and others. Accordingly, the notion of social im/mobilities emphasizes the complexities of current changes, taking us beyond the prism of a one-dimensional social ladder, for social moves cannot always be apprehended through the binaries of ‘gains’ and ‘losses’.

Borderities and the Politics of Contemporary Mobile Borders

Borderities and the Politics of Contemporary Mobile Borders
Author: A. Amilhat-Szary
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2015-06-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137468858

This book explores the emerging forms and functions of contemporary mobile borders. It deals with issues of security, technology, migration and cooperation while addressing the epistemological and political questions that they raise. The 'borderities' approach illuminates the question of how borders can be the site of both power and counter-power.

Transnational Mobility and Global Health

Transnational Mobility and Global Health
Author: Peter H. Koehn
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2020-06
Genre: Emigration and immigration
ISBN: 9780367564575

Transnational Mobility and Global Health spotlights the powerful and dynamic intersections of human movement and health. The book explores the interacting political, social, economic, and cultural determinants of migrant health, proposing specific and innovative ways to enhance global health in an age of transnational mobility.

African Diaspora Identities

African Diaspora Identities
Author: John W. Arthur
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2010-08-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0739146394

African Diaspora Identities provides insights into the complex transnational processes involved in shaping the migratory identities of African immigrants. It seeks to understand the durability of these African transnational migrant identities and their impact on inter-minority group relationships. John A. Arthur demonstrates that the identities African immigrants construct often transcends country-specific cultures and normative belief systems. He illuminates the fact that these transnational migrant identities are an amalgamation of multiple identities formed in varied social transnational settings. The United States has become a site for the cultural formations, manifestations, and contestations of the newer identities that these immigrants seek to depict in cross-cultural and global settings. Relying mostly on their strong human capital resources (education and family), Africans are devising creative, encompassing, and robust ways to position and reposition their new identities. In combining their African cultural forms and identities with new roles, norms, and beliefs that they imbibe in the United States and everywhere else they have settled, Africans are redefining what it means to be black in a race-, ethnicity-, and color-conscious American society.

Power and Informality in Urban Africa

Power and Informality in Urban Africa
Author: Laura Stark
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2021-12-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1786993465

Urban Africa is undergoing a transformation unlike anywhere else in the world, as unprecedented numbers of people migrate to rapidly expanding cities. But despite the growing body of work on urban Africa, the lives of these new city dwellers have received relatively little attention, particularly when it comes to crucial issues of power and inequality. This interdisciplinary collection brings together contributions from urban studies, geography, and anthropology to provide new insights into the social and political dynamics of African cities, as well as uncovering the causes and consequences of urban inequality. Featuring rich new ethnographic research data and case studies drawn from across the continent, the collection shows that Africa's new urbanites have adapted to their environs in ways which often defy the assumptions of urban planners. By examining the experiences of these urban residents in confronting issues of power and agency, the contributors consider how such insights can inform more effective approaches to research, city planning and development both in Africa and beyond.

Friendship, Descent and Alliance in Africa

Friendship, Descent and Alliance in Africa
Author: Martine Guichard
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2014-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1782382879

Friendship, descent and alliance are basic forms of relatedness that have received unequal attention in social anthropology. Offering new insights into the ways in which friendship is conceptualized and realized in various sub-Saharan African settings, the contributions to this volume depart from the recent tendency to study friendship in isolation from kinship. In drawing attention to the complexity of the interactions between these two kinds of social relationships, the book suggests that analyses of friendship in Western societies would also benefit from research that explores more systematically friendship in conjunction with kinship.